Last Updated on January 30, 2019
Kim arrives home after a long winter’s day and experiences one of a homeowner’s greatest fears. A cold house and a furnace that isn’t working. In the basement nothing looks out of the ordinary except there’s no gas getting into the unit – and no heat coming out of it. She was behind on her gas bill but a phone call to the utility a couple days ago took care of that. So the $64,000 question remains…
Why did the gas company shut off Kim’s heat?
A frantic call to the utility, building anxiety as she waits on hold, and hands that are starting to freeze send her stress level through the roof. The customer service rep feels Kim’s wrath but remains professional and displays genuine empathy for her situation. She hopes it’s all just a misunderstanding and the heat will come back on soon. In the meanwhile, she’s shivering on what feels like the coldest day of the year.
The rep reviews her account and sees the call she made but doesn’t see a record of the payment. Only one thing to do – pull the call recording and see what happened. It’s an easy process to retrieve the recording using a simple keyword search by customer name.
The rep places her on hold and listens to the call. Feels like an eternity to review a three-minute phone call but eventually he returns to the line. “I apologize for the error,” is how he begins the conversation. “We took your payment over the phone but the card did not get processed.”
Kim feels warmer already as she realizes everything will be fixed soon. A couple minutes later Kim feels the warm air coming from her vents. “Thank goodness!”
Call Monitoring and Recording is Good Business for Utilities
Because of state-of-the-art call recording technology, your utility was able to identify their error and make it right in a few minutes time. Recording incoming and outgoing calls allowed you to resolve an issue in the customer’s favor and 70% of the time customers will continue doing business with you when this happens. In the past, utility customers were a captive market but now that multiple suppliers are allowed to use the same infrastructure, there’s competition based on product, price, and service.
This means utilities can’t mail in their customer service anymore. Luckily with call recording solutions like Versadial’s, not only can you make things right for the customer but you can use the recorded call to coach the rep who didn’t process the payment correctly. Conversely, you can reward the rep who was cool under fire and solved the customer’s problem quickly and courteously.
Call recording technology has so many benefits in the utility sector. This list reveals just a few them.
- Settle billing disputes
- Capture special service requests and route them to field technicians
- Confirm appointment times and directions
- Properly document customer information when setting up new service
- Coach and develop customer service representatives
Last Updated on January 30, 2019